Want Effectiveness and Productivity? Use a Checklist!

Posted on March 4, 2008
Filed Under Management, Productivity, CEO Skills |

Checklists improve productivity I mentioned this before but I don’t think I gave it the focus it deserves. The focus it deserves is actually in this New Yorker article and a shorter one in Fast Company.

But consider this key quote

If someone found a new drug that could wipe out infections with anything remotely like the effectiveness of Pronovost’s [check lists], there would be television ads with Robert Jarvik extolling its virtues, detail men offering free lunches to get doctors to make it part of their practice, government programs to research it, and competitors jumping in to make a newer, better version.

The article focuses on checklists to improve outcomes in hospital intensive care units. But has examples of their use in other fields, with results just as impressive.

Why They are Unappealing

But just like the timer, a checklist is so mundane we feel funny using it. We think it will dehumanize our workers or our work. In my opinion it does the opposite. For two reasons.

When the checklist is created (and improved) it encapsulates the best of our creativity and judgement to determine how to best perform a job. In other words it takes the best practices out of the heads of a few individuals and spreads them around the entire organization.
When the checklist is used, it provides consistentcy and recall of best practices. Consistency and recall are two things people are not terribly good at. By relying on the checklist for those parts of their job, they can free their brains for other aspects that people are good at. Courage, wits, and improvisation are three of these that are mentioned in the New Yorker article.

Would your business benefit from consistency? Best Practices? Courage? Wits? Improvisation - what I’ll call creativity? If so then I’d propose that management’s primary job is to create check lists and make sure they are used properly.

Takeaways:

Checklists encapsulate the best thinking in your organization and make it available to everyone
Checklists replace the parts of our brain we aren’t good at, and free us up to use the parts we are.
The primary job of Management is to come up with the right checklists and make sure they are used properly.

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